Why am I here?

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 10:32:05 -0400

So I was reading Jeremiah 13 the other day, minding my own business in my quiet time, when I came across this story – not for the first time, but just the first time in a while (vv1-14).

If you know the story – you know that Jeremiah is prophesying terrible things for the people of God – and he isn’t well liked for it.
In the midst of all these messages, God tells Jeremiah he needs a new linen belt. One that has never been washed and he gets to wear it around for a few days so everyone can appreciate his fashion.

At the end of that few days, he gets told to take it and to bury it in a hole in some rocks near the Euphrates River, and he does that and just leaves it there.

A long time later the Lord speaks to Jeremiah and says, go fetch your new belt.

This time when Jeremiah finds his belt, the Bible says that it was mildewed and falling apart and useless. He could no longer wear it with pride.

What caught my attention was v 11 – where God says that he created his people to cling to Him, like the belt was made to cling to Jeremiah.

The people had chosen sinfulness rather than godliness, really their sin rather than God, and the result was that they were useless to God and he could no longer have them around.

As I meditated on this chapter was that phrase that God had created us to cling to Him. That His purpose for our lives from the time we were born and even before that as He envisioned our yet unborn lives was that all of us would be close to Him, that we would love Him and serve Him and know Him.

The great tragedy of our lives is that too often choose our own ways, our own sin, our own selfishness over a deep relationship with God.

I believe this is the great message of the cross – that God created us for fellowship with Him, but we have let our sin make us filthy and useless. We have allowed the garbage of our lives to rob us of a relationship with God – and there is nothing we can do to make our lives clean and acceptable to God again.
That’s why Jesus came. He absorbs the sin. He washes our hearts and lives. And He restores our relationship with our heavenly Father, our Abba (Daddy in Hebrew again).
My prayer over the past number of days has been that God would restore that fresh desire to meet with God, and would help me to choose always closeness with Him over whatever other things might clutter my agenda, or things that might seem so sweet and wonderful in this moment, but ultimately destroy intimacy with God.

I’m inviting you to do the same today. God bless you friends!

—Pastor Bob

PASTOR’s BLOG

Why am I here?